I remember reading an article recently by Thomas Sowell (I think)
which claimed much the same thing this NY Times article did about
standards. Sowell's point, briefly, was that public education
isn’t failing at all, given its objectives. It strives to make
people feel good, whether they learn anything of use or not. It
strives to do away with terms like “excellence” and the
like because these assume hierarchical evaluation. Rather than create
students capable of critical thinking skills, it creates students who
are completely unable to discern good from bad and right from wrong,
or even, heaven forbid, better from worse.

The question becomes, to my mind, is this a laudable goal for public
education? Fundamentally and emphatically, my answer is no. Students
who have the capacity to see world forces but can not understand their
overdue balance notice are no good to anyone. Students who have their
heads filled with gibberish about the virtues of knowing all cultures
can not see the value of their own. They are devoid of all reference
points.

An absence of standards, which is what the NY Times article observes,
is exactly the problem. Replacing one set of standards with another is
a natural process of evolution—assuming we are all willing to
accept that this sort of thing just happens —- but replacing one
set of standards with rules that preclude the existence of standards
leads our students into an area where neither they nor we are equipped
to operate.

I’ve said this before, and it remains relevant to the
discussion, so I’ll say it again. Students do need to look
beyond mere data to see a larger picture and to challenge whatever
assumptions they have formed. They are only able to do this when they
have data beyond which to look and discernable assumptions to
challenge.

I’m quite sure I will be accused of reactionary politics and an
inability to see beyond the narrow, politically motivated approach to
which I am prone because of my euro-centric background, but forward I
must plow in any event. An absence of standards, and in this case an
active campaign to study “world forces” without a
framework to understand them, is destructive to the well-being of the
children and thus to the future of society. Anarchy is not a form of
government. No amount of papering over the issue with charges of
left-wing or right-wing politics and “greatwhitemale” bias
or whatever can change the fundamental point. Are we going to have
standards for our students to meet or are we going to declare that
there is no longer a need for standards?

Students do need to look beyond mere data to see a larger picture and
to challenge whatever assumptions they have formed. They are only able
to do this when they have data beyond which to look and discernable
assumptions to challenge.

and

An absence of standards, and in this case an active campaign to study
“world forces” without a framework to understand them, is
destructive to the well-being of the children and thus to the future
of society.

Chris:

It seems to me that there is a contradiction here—the world
history standards you dismiss are trying to engage students in
painting the “larger picture” and “to challenge
whatever assumptions they have formed.” I would think you would
love them for creating that larger framework, thus enabling students
to “look beyond mere data,” and to establish another level
of generalization.

Unless I have misread the standards, I think they provide exactly what
you seek.

In the name of “seeing a wider picture”, history becomes
the study of “world forces” rather than individuals
—- sounds a good deal like predestination and all that rot.

Under the guise of “placing European history in its world
context” or some equally pompous educational expression, the
fundamental importance of European history in getting us where we are
now is being submerged. No, it's not being eliminated completely,
but I remain unconvinced that either history (european or world) is
done justice by trying to cover too much.

If you have a semester to cover the War between the States (that's
another discussion), you can clearly examine in some detail the
“common people” in so far as records of these people
exist—but when we must introduce hundreds of years of history in
one year, we do not have time to examine “common people”
without doing serious harm to the remainder of the picture. (This is,
in some respects, a subdivision of #2).

The methodology of “social historians” who seek to study
“the common people” and “democracy” and all
that rot is quite unproven. To anticipate the obvious objection, the
Annalistes assembled a documentary record from which to draw their
conclusions, but such work is rarely done by modern social
historians. History is not merely a subset of sociology.

Statistics and history are not the same thing.

As just one example among many, the Bishop of the Diocese of Raleigh
has used what he calls an “African proverb” to couch his
newly defined mission to the children of his See: “It takes a
whole village to raise a child”. Problem is, he presents this as
if it is something uniquely African—what I call the Benighted
tribes theory of history. The French (to name the case I know best)
have had this approach for years, but instead of quoting it as a
principle of French (or European or whatever) society, he insists it
is an African proverb.

I’ve tried to restrain myself from throwing myself into this
interesting debate, but Chris Garton-Zavesky's latest contribution
destroyed my resolve. I’ll try to follow his good example and be
brief, and I will address only the first four of his seven points.

If I understand him correctly, Chris is saying that while a broad view
of history is unobjectionable, it should not have led the writers of
the standards to study social forces rather than invidiuals.

I’m not convinced this is a real issue. I suspect most
historians, and perhaps Chris himself, assume that BOTH individuals
and social forces are the engine of history. That would seem a
common-sense view, but the modern West European ideology of
individualism on one hand, and a mechanical model of natural
processes on the other, persuaded many people in the nineteenth
century that the determination of natural forces contradicted human
free will and moral responsibility. For a century now, this naive
view has not carried weight in scholarly circles. For one thing, the
development of thermodynamics late in the nineteeth century and
quantum mechanics in the twentieth make clear that in many, if not
all areas of science, determinism is probabilistic, not
unequivocal. An (objective) probabilistic determinism gives plenty
of scope for the efficacy of individual struggle and moral
responsibility.

Chris seems to imply that placing the particulars of history in
relation to a broader situation should not obscure the primacy of the
particular and how the particular of European history explains how we
got where we are.

The issue of the relation of the particular and the general or
universal is certainly an old one, but to insist on the primacy of
the particular seems peculiarly modern and West European, in fact,
18th and 19th century German and perhaps English, the fruit of
Newtonian atomism. A reduction of history to the particular raises
enormous problems. If the past determines the present, then history
should wind down, not up. Where then is the creative and moral
responsibility? Surely the course of history is as much a result of
struggles in the present as it is of the weight of the past, and if
so, then the relation of the particular to the general must surely be
as significant as the particular itself.

Chris does not identity his social location, and so who is the
“we” he is talking about? This is a list on world
history, with subscribers all over the world, and it draws the
participation of social groups whose relation might possibly be
contradictory. So therefore the use of the term we, as Chris does
here, without the particularity and identity of a particular we, must
strike most people as rather colonial. In my own city, people of
European heritage constitute a minority. The elements of African,
Caribbean and Native American culture blend with the traditions of
Europe, both East and West, in complex ways that have given rise to
various syntheses that are not easily resolved into simple
constituent elements. To reduce those proud traditions to that of
Europe would only be insulting and, more importantly, fly in the face
of the facts.

Culture is a complex flux that is necessarily
undefinable. Everyone's culture is different, and everyone
participates in the active construction of culture. To reduce that
complexity to European culture is unrealistic, and to freeze that
culture by identifying it simply as an inheritance of the past, and to
identify that culture in practice with the mental activity of a few
white rich males, seems perverse. We all create our own culture,
although we don’t create it just as we please, but in terms of
the various traditions with which we come into contact, we
nevertheless are sui generis, not simple agents of the past.

There is a long-standing debate between the advocates of Western Civ
and of world history, and their difference revolves around the very
point that Chris raises. People who advocate Western Civ are indeed
seeking the roots of the power culture in the US today. But does world
history pretend to do that same? Sometimes it is said that we are all
citizens of a global village, and by learning the tradition of our
fellow villagers, we acquire identity as global citizens. I’m
not pursuaded, but it does illustrate that not ALL history necessarily
is a search for roots.

Chris feels that popular history is all well and fine, but the common
people count less in the weight of history than some unmentioned
others whom he does not care to label or define.

Well, if history is a discovery of “our” roots, my roots
are of very common folk, I assure you. So therefore I should be
studying only common people, if I follow Chris' prescription. But
I’m sure this is not what he meant. What he meant were the
shakers and doers of history, or at least what a small group of
intellectuals decided were the shakers and doers. But if history is
the product of the thoughts and actions of people of wealth and power,
then what happens to my free choice and moral responsibility, since
I’m not one of them and neither were my ancestors. If the Golden
Rule is that, He who has the gold, rules, then are we not back to
objective historical forces that swallow up the individual? I
don’t see how Chris can reconcile a rugged individualism that
springs from the breast of human nature, and the objective forces that
make some indviduals count and not others.

I don’t want to belabor this. The term “social
history” means quite different things in different national
traditions. It is not clear that there is a distictive methodology of
social history. The Annales School is just one kind of social history,
and I’m not sure there is a common methodological thread even
there. I’m not sure what it means to say the Annalists
“assembled a documentary record,” or why the Annales
tradition is presumed to be over. What method is Chris thinking of?
“Thick description” with coherence a function of a
presumed commmon human nature? But that seems awfully close to the
position Chris artculated in his earlier points. I would not presume
to dismiss anyone else's chosen field as illicit, nor would I
presume to reject a methodology without stating what it is.

If Charles Krauthammer is in the loop, the criticism of the NATIONAL
STANDARDS is part of an orchestrated attack on the NEH. In
Thursday's WASHINGTON POST he made the following instructive
comments, after recognizing a “willigness to go after
middle-class welfare” in a letter addressed to Newt Gingrich,

Co-President for Domestic Policy.

A nicely symbolic start would be the elimination of those welfare
check writers for the intellectual classes, the National Endowment for
the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The beauty of
these cuts is the cultural side benefit that comes from strangling
agencies that cannot—it has by now been proven—be kept out
of the hands of the academic left. The recently issued American and
world history “standards,” which turn political
correctness into a federal mandate, are an object lesson: federal
‘culture’ agencies are beyond redemption.

People who have devoted their lives to education have been reduced to
members of an “intellectual class,” self-interestedly
trying to promote the production and teaching knowledge—just
another interest group out there.

It's challenging in a sense to have to defend our work and the
values it is predicated upon, but we had better get organized if we
want to do it effectively. I wrote today to the president of my
university and the president of my alma mater. I hope many of you will
do the same. We need to work quickly to reach both supportive and
hostile members of Congress, and our presidents probably have the most
influence upon them. I urge you all to get the NATIONAL STANDARDS FOR
UNITED STATES HISTORY and WORLD HISTORY, $18.95 each plus $5. postage
and handling from the National Center for History in the Schools,
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024. If the STANDARDS is merely a staging
ground for a larger war on the NEH, NEA, NPR, and NHPRC and everything
else that involved federal support of education and culture, then
let's take our bearing now for the fights ahead.

Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 10:20:20 -0500
Sender: H-NET List for World History (H-WORLD@msu.edu)
From: Sandi Cooper (SANSI@CUNYVM.CUNY.edu)
Graduate School, City University of New York
Subject: History Standards

To underscore the importance of Joyce Appleby's recent posting
regarding the war on the NEH, NEA, etc., I cite statement in a recent
“New Yorker” article by David Remnick entitled (Lost in
Space) which assesses Newt Gingrich's intellectual
baggage. Towards the end, Remnick writes:

Now conservatism, including Gingrich, wants desperately to make its
domestic agenda the new crusade, the fill-in for that great absence in
American life—the Cold War. Irving Kristol, who remains
important in the movement (and not only as William's father),
wrote last year in “The National Interest,” ‘There
is no ‘after the Cold War’ for me. So far from having
ended’ my cold war has increased in intensity, as sector after
sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal
ethos… . Now that the other ‘Cold War’ is over, the
real cold war has begun. We are far less prepared for this cold war,
far more vulnerable to our enemy, than was the case against a global
Communist threat.’

As John Patrick Diggins wrote recently the “The New York
Times” about the History standards project, it reflected the
liberal corruption of the University by not privilging charismatic
leaders of the past as heros for children and young people. And
Diggins, appointed to the CUNY Graduate Faculty by the successors of
Gertrude Himmelfarb, insists that leftists inhabit most of
academia. [Himmelfarb for the uninitated is William Kristol's
mother as well as a distinguished historian with little patience for
social history.]

The struggle that Joyce Appleby anticipates will be a very long march.

For those of you who have been following this particular thread, you
may be interested to know that Diane Ravitch has written a thoughtful
but harsh critique in the latest edition of Education Week
(”Standards in U.S. History: An Assessment”, Dec. 7,
1994). Although her article focuses on the U.S. History Standards, her
criticism is also aimed at the World History Standards. Her major
complaint is that the standards contain “a persistent strand of
political bias that is unaceptable in a document that aspires to set
national standards.”

Also in the same issue of Education Week, is a notice that Lynne
Cheney has started a National Review Panel to “critique proposed
voluntary national education standards.” She apparently
doesn’t believe that NESIC can do an good job. Note who the
funder is: Readers' Digest Association.

I hope people will take the time to read her comments and I would be
interested in hearing responses.